Disney+ and Disney Channel have officially handed a pilot episode order to a live-action adaptation of Max Brallier’s wildly popular book series, The Last Kids on Earth.
This marks a major network shift for the intellectual property, which is assembling a highly experienced creative team for its live-action debut. Bestselling writers and showrunners Chad Fiveash and James Stoteraux, known for their work on The Vampire Diaries and Gotham Knights, are attached to write and executive produce the project, while Kevin Tancharoen (The Book of Boba Fett) has been tapped to direct the pilot.
The post-apocalyptic adventure follows a mismatched group of teenagers who must band together to survive and ultimately attempt to prevent the end of the world after monsters overrun their sleepy town of Wakefield. First published in 2015, Brallier’s illustrated books are no stranger to television screens. The Last Kids on Earth was previously adapted into a successful three-season animated series by Thunderbird Entertainment’s Atomic Cartoons, which streamed on Netflix from 2019 to 2021.
The new Disney+ iteration features a collaborative production backing, with executive producers including the author Max Brallier himself alongside Blue Ant Studios. The Last Kids on Earth project also carries significant industry weight following recent corporate shifting; Thunderbird Entertainment, the studio behind the original animated run, was acquired by Blue Ant Media in a massive 89 million Canadian dollar deal that closed this past January, bridging the property’s past success with its new live-action future.
